Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2014, days after the killing on 12 May 2014 and before any trial, hence “allegedly by a member of her own party”. The recent deaths it lists (Steve Jobs 2011, Paul Walker 2013, Adolfo Suárez and Gabriel García Márquez 2014) and the corruption references are from 2014.
I should say that I waited several days before writing this article so as not to join in the opportunistic controversy. For readers who do not know who Isabel Carrasco was (which is hard by now), suffice it to say that she was a Spanish politician who, among many other posts, served as President of the Provincial Council of León, and who was recently shot dead, allegedly by a member of her own political party.
Far from causing outrage at the tragic event, social media filled up with jokes about the deceased, to the point that the Spanish police even went after the authors of those comments for allegedly glorifying violence. With that introduction out of the way: what life lesson does Isabel Carrasco leave us?
In recent years we have lost many public figures. Steve Jobs died, and he will be remembered as the greatest visionary of our recent history, a great entrepreneur who left as his legacy one of the most valuable companies on the planet, along with countless pieces of advice, business lessons and famous quotes that will go down in history. Although some people adored him, he also had big clashes with his rivals, but he was feared and respected by his friends, his employees and his competitors. (Read: What Steve Jobs and Bill Gates really thought of each other)
Paul Walker died. You may or may not like him as an actor, but he left a legacy of entertaining films. Fans of car racing movies will always say that nobody drove like Paul Walker. And if we ask women about this blond, blue-eyed actor…
Adolfo Suárez died (the prime minister who led Spain’s transition to democracy), and voters on the left and the right were moved by the news about this man who fought for many of the rights we Spaniards enjoy today.
More recently Gabriel García Márquez died, leaving us a body of literary work.
But then Isabel Carrasco died, and many of us are still looking for the legacy this woman left.
Rather than going after the people who are not saddened by her death (we are not in North Korea), her party colleagues and the opposition should stop for a few minutes and think about why this situation has arisen among the public.
People’s discontent, outrage and “disgust” with a political class that keeps surprising us every day with new corruption cases has become more than evident, and it still amazes us that public officials are caught off guard by it.
A life lesson
We often publish articles about how to feel like a person who has achieved success in life, and that advice includes being ethical and honest, flying straight, creating something of value for others and not organising your life around money.
When you are gone, your descendants will hear about you: about the things you did in life, what you created and the kind of person you were. You will not be able to prevent or censor what people say about you when you are gone, so all that is left is to live a life in keeping with what we hope they will say about us when we are no longer here.
A lesson for our leaders
If you treat people like animals, sooner or later they will behave like animals.
A few days after the political outrage over the jokes on social media, Spain was shocked again by a video in which several politicians mock parents who were crying at a council meeting over the lack of resources and solutions for their children with cancer. To me that was a far more despicable gesture than the “mockery” over the death of a woman who at least had the economic and social means to defend herself, not least because if the lack of resources in an oncology ward causes the death of a child with cancer, and that death could have been prevented, it would be the equivalent of murder. And that is unforgivable.
In short: something is not right, and the problem is not what people say about politicians, but what politicians do to make people say it. I think politicians forget that they are not the bosses but the employees of the people, and that a politician is there to serve the people, not to rob them.
Personally, I do not rejoice in anyone’s murder, but my tear ducts have run dry from crying for so many people who did something productive with their lives, something good in other people’s lives, and who looked beyond their own personal enrichment.
Further reading
- 8 life lessons from Warren Buffett
- 26 lessons to prepare your child for the real world
- 7 lessons for success from the SEAL who hunted down Bin Laden
Featured image: Carlos Cunha, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
